Resurrecting Midnight (5 page)

I remained in the chase, passed condos and shopping centers, drugstores, gas stations, ran raccoons into the shadows and startled pedestrians out of the crosswalks, sped by pizza shops, Subway sandwiches, and martial arts studios, ran lights in front of Skylake Shopping Center. Cars jumped in my way as they left Publix, forced me to whip around trucks pulling out at WaMu, met the same impediment at Wachovia.

The lead SUV rammed the side of a Mercedes leaving McDonald’s, ran that car into a bus stop. The second driver created the same havoc on a Lexus across from Pizza Palace, forced that driver into a pole. Up ahead, Arizona whipped left and right, zipped into oncoming traffic, then cut back in the right lane before she had a head-on collision. She drove fast and furious. Cars screeched and blew horns, drivers startled to find themselves in a scene that looked like it was straight out of
Ronin.

Light poles remained a blur. Horns blared. Curses flew.

I sped by the second SUV, my speed one-forty. I had caught up with the first load of assassins, but I slowed down, slowed way down, controlled my speed, and when the speed was right, used two fingers on my front brake, went into a front-wheel stoppie, made the back end raise up, then came to a stop with my back end paused in the air, shifted my weight and worked with gravity, made the bike turn and spin 180 degrees on the front tire, came down facing startled traffic and the rampaging SUV.

Duc rumbling in neutral, its heat between my legs, kickstand down, I dug inside my messenger bag, pulled out my nine millimeter, and as headlights zipped by me on both sides, ignored passing traffic and fired at the driver’s side of the black SUV sheltering the assassins. I unloaded, gritted my teeth, fired as fast as I could, shattered glass, each shot more desperate than the one before, sprayed right to left as my salty sweat became my enemy and stung my eyes, fired from driver to passenger and back again, destroyed that windshield, fired as headlights clicked to high beam, fired as that brilliance teamed up with my sweat, compromised my vision.

Then my clip was empty.

The SUV barreled right at me, three tons of metal and fiberglass.

Nowhere to run.

No way to run.

I was trapped, four hundred pounds of Italian workmanship humming between my legs.

I’d killed many, but I’d died once. And that death had been a horrible death.

I’d been killed in London. And brought back to life.

I knew that, at some point, I’d die again.

We all died that final death.

Even the resurrected.

I gritted my teeth, looked Death in the eyes, braced for impact.

In that moment, I thought about Steven and Robert. Thought about Catherine.

X.Y.Z.

Wished I knew the truth.

The SUV lost control, swerved by me, missed by inches, came so close I thought I’d been knocked over. The out-of-control SUV bounced over the median, went up on its two left tires, hit the curb, careened and slammed square into a condo building.

I stuffed my nine inside my messenger bag, kicked into gear, and hit the throttle, burned around 180 degrees, took off like a cowboy on his reared-up horse. I put my iron horse down and raced after the madness, forced my Streetfighter to move like a 747.

Heartbeat gonging.

I feared I was too late.

 

More wrecked vehicles
confirmed the direction the pursuit had gone.

I saw them as I approached I-95. I’d hoped Arizona had vanished onto the first on-ramp, sped north toward Fort Lauderdale, or gone under the overpass and hit I-95 South, vanished toward Miami.

She hadn’t done either.

Arizona had stopped right beyond the northbound entrance, had come to halt with her Maserati facing the wrong way, had done a 180 herself, her headlights facing the trouble that had been chasing her. The other SUV had stopped, facing the exit to the north off-ramp for I-95, its bright lights on Arizona.

The Maserati was damaged, smoke rising from under the hood. It had hit cars and run over center dividers. It didn’t look like the same luxury car I had seen two miles ago.

I zoomed by the SUV, braked hard, came to a dramatic stop in front of the Maserati, the scent of burning tire rubber rising up inside my nostrils as I kept the Duc under my control. I put myself between Arizona and those aggressors, slammed down my kickstand, used the bike as a shield. She had her gun in her right hand. But she wasn’t firing. It was empty. She had shot her load. I got low and reached inside my messenger bag again, had to get out my nine, take out the spent clip, then reload.

Had to do all of that while a pregnant woman took shelter behind her car door.

Had to do that while bullets whizzed my way.

In the middle of all the conflict, cars, trucks, city buses, SUVs, and motorcycles rampaged up Miami Gardens Drive, not caring that they were driving through the epicenter of a war zone.

My shots silenced the killer who jumped out on the passenger side to run our way, his Russian-made weapon blazing. His lifeless body fell forward, dropped to the ground chin-first. Then the spray-and-pray Uzi he was holding hit the ground and skidded my way.

They were Spanish men. Well-dressed Spanish men. Professionals with good tailors.

The driver rushed to the back of the SUV, didn’t leave me with a good shot. Then he reloaded, came back shooting. By then I had bolted and picked up the dead man’s Uzi.

I returned fire, held my ground.

We had company.

Another car raced down I-95 north’s off-ramp. A car that wasn’t slowing down as it approached the intersection. It was a silver BMW 650i, its speed at least sixty and rising. A speeding car that had killed its headlights, it too moving with an unmistakable fury.

The hired gun that had jumped out of the driver’s side of the SUV looked toward that car.

A silver chariot that wasn’t going to stop until it trampled somebody.

There was death. And then there were horrible ways to die.

When anybody was hit head-on, two horrific things happened, and I saw that horror when the BMW assaulted the driver of the SUV. His legs snapped and threw his body forward. His hands slammed into the hood of the 650i. The hired gun’s broken body snapped at the knees and was thrown forward into the windshield of the sports car. His gun took flight, flew to the other side of the boulevard, landed and skidded across asphalt. I had expected him to tumble forward as well, roll over the roof of the car, his body spinning like a top and landing behind the BMW, crashing into the oil-stained asphalt. But the unexpected happened, and the hired gun went into the windshield.

He went headfirst, cracked his face open as he shattered the glass. Came to rest with his broken body halfway inside the 650i, his waist the dividing point, his broken legs dangling and twisted.

On impact, the driver of the silver chariot hit the brakes hard, but not hard enough to prevent screeching across four lanes and slamming into the wall on the opposite side of the overpass.

The air bag exploded, attacked the driver. The world stopped and silence intruded, overtook the cacophony of madness. Palm trees swayed. Traffic sped by overhead. Dim streetlights covered us.

I moved toward that damaged vehicle, Uzi trained on the madman at the wheel.

The driver of the 650i shoved the air bag away, loosened the seat belt, and crawled out of the damaged vehicle, legs wobbling, battered and struggling to find her center of gravity.

The streetlight revealed that the driver of the German sports car was a woman.

She was stunned, staggered a couple of steps, but she pulled her disheveled hair from her face. Even with a helmet on my head, even though I was mostly silhouette, she knew who I was. And I knew who she was. I knew her history. I knew her crimes. I recognized her silhouette. She wore jeans and a short white blouse, one that had colorful sleeves, her Filipina face looking tanner than it was the last time I had seen her in Amsterdam, her black hair longer, at least a year’s worth of growth added to what I remembered.

Her name was Sierra. Arizona’s younger sister. A woman I’d been sent to kill more than a year ago. That was around the same time Sierra had put a hit out on her big sister. Arizona had done the same, had put a hit out on Sierra. Two broken sisters who had once wanted to slaughter each other now stood side by side. An angered queen and a pissed-off Pussycat Doll.

The killer was stuck in the windshield of the smoking 650i. One of his broken legs moved. He was standing on Death’s front porch, but he refused to ring the doorbell.

Sierra took a remote out of her pocket, aimed it at the damaged luxury car.

The BMW burst into flames. All evidence on fire. The smell of death, fire, car oil, and human flesh came together and created a deadly smoke. A flash of heat licked across my face. The sizzle of that burning body startled me, the stink of burning flesh unforgettable. It stalled Arizona too, but not enough to keep her from going back to the damaged Maserati and pulling out that high-tech suitcase and her D&G bag, the latter containing her high-tech devices. That burning assassin did nothing to Sierra. Arizona put one of her hands over her swollen belly, held her unborn like a protective mother. An Arizona I had never seen before. Sierra stood like she was a Filipina demigod who’d killed Culann’s fierce guard dogs.

And at the same time, a second car raced down the ramp Sierra had just taken. It was a Quattroporte. Another luxury sports car, this one with four doors. Four doors could mean four people, four brand-new kinds of trouble. That V-8 could do zero to sixty in a little over five seconds, and it topped out at about one hundred seventy-five miles per hour. The driver moved like they were stressing all of that car’s features. It came off the ramp and made a dramatic stop.

The front windows were down and I saw him. Saw his Latin features. The same features I had seen when we met inside an elevator in London. Saw he still wore his hair slicked back.

He jumped out of the car, hurried to Arizona. He held her stomach, held his baby.

He was Latin by heritage, British by culture, a man who fit in with any nationality, especially the Spanish. Strong frame dressed in an Italian suit, a nine millimeter at his side.

He was the man who had saved my life and negotiated my freedom. The man I owed a debt. The man Arizona had opened her legs for, the grifter who had put a baby in Arizona’s belly.

South America. End of the World. The land of fire. It flashed before my eyes.

The well-dressed man saw the flames and burning body, saw me, then he nodded as if he thought he was telling me I had done a good job, his nod the pat on the head of a pet. Uzi in hand, I moved the business end away from his direction. Wanted to gun him down, kill him the same way his father had been killed. Kill him the way I had killed my father. Wanted to add his body to the flames of the new hell that warmed us. Over Arizona. Or over a debt. It didn’t matter. I just wanted that motherfucker to not exist. One Scamz had died a much-deserved death only to have another rise in his wake. A younger version. A taller version. A better-looking version, in clothing and jewelry that made Armani and Rolex seem like rags of the poor.

Another man was inside his car. In the backseat. That man jumped out too. Short and muscular, dressed in high-end linen, hair long and wavy, maybe Samoan, reminded me of Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The man yelled at the women, said things in Tagalog, words that made them hurry. Tagalog. Not Samoan. Filipino. He was armed with a nine. His wingman rode shotgun, his burner locked and loaded. Sierra limped toward the passenger side of the Quattroporte, still dazed from her crash. The Filipino man took her hand and pulled her, rushed her into the backseat, practically threw her inside. Arizona rushed toward the same car, abandoned her GranTurismo for the Quattroporte, tossed her briefcase and D&G bag inside.

That briefcase. A duplicate of the one in South America. Had to have a tracking device.

It was what the SUVs were after.

I tossed the Uzi inside the burning BMW, let the flames of Hell erase my DNA, then jumped back on my Streetfighter, four hundred pounds of Italian machinery revving once again.

Flames rising, a body burning, Arizona climbed into the front seat, next to her sperm donor.

Arizona’s hand came out of the car window, a remote aimed at her Maserati.

The damaged GranTurismo burst into flames. Just like the BMW.

In the distance, sirens.

Capítulo 5

The assassin
known as Medianoche jerked awake, came out of a deep sleep with his fists clenched, ready to do battle with the enemy. A hurricane moved through his body, a muscular body he struggled to control. Darkness lived on three sides of his world.

There were flashes that lit up like premonitions.

On the fourth side, lights in the distance confused him, made him think of enemy fire.

African children wielding U.S.-made guns and firing on armed American soldiers. Middle Eastern women and children who had been turned into walking bombs racing toward them in the name of Allah. He had been places where oil, blood diamonds, and cocaine were the commodity used for trade. Places where the hardened male children carried automatic weapons, wore fatigue pants, flip-flops, and Michael Jordan jerseys, children who killed before they could bust a nut. For a moment, there were flashes. Memories speeding by. Flashes from the things he’d seen. Some of the flashes were painful, dead memories battling to come back to life.

His missing memory was struggling to reboot, fighting to come back online.

Three silhouettes crowded his bed, all naked, motionless, limber limbs intertwined.

Bodies left on a smoldering battlefield.

He inhaled, expecting the familiar scent of death. Then he exhaled and swallowed. The room smelled of alcohol, sex, and three perfumes. And smoke. Blended with the scents was the aroma of Cuban cigar smoke mixed with smoke from Argentine cigarettes.